JoyofRLC Acker

I have some questions about how powerful a machine to get if I upgrade my current PC which seems to be bogging down. I have current mid range desktop for SL - Dell X51 R2 CPU: i7 4770 @ 3.4GHZ RAM: 8 GB GPU: NV GTX 760 Ti OS: Win 7 Home Prem 64 bit While it still works well, it now approaching 5 years old, and there are a few issues: - boot and re-boot times are incredibly slow (it can take MANY minutes to log off, overall re-boot time is around 5 - 10 minutes) - Dells system analysis tells me all is well but I am wondering about hard drive or RAM health (SMART stats suggest all is good, but...) - Im lazy and often have multiple applications open while in SL. In particular Firefox is a memory hog, also Lightroom. It would be nice to not have to close everything down for SL (which I sometimes do when Im concerned about performance for sailing but its a drag). Note Im not wanting to work in other apps (except maybe Firefox) while in SL, I just want to leave the sessions open. - every so often, especially in SL I hear the disc thrashing, my guess is that there's a lot paging going on - MS support for Win 7 ends next year; I'm guessing that Win 10 has a heavier footprint The machine copes fairly well with SL under most conditions when I have it freshly booted and nothing else really running, (except for the disc thrashing I mentioned). I guess my main concern at this point is age of the machine. Aside from SL I do some work (MS office) and also photography (Lightroom). Multiple USB drives for things like music library, photo archives, backup etc. No other gaming (currently). Given the age of the machine and the factors listed Im contemplating getting a new machine. Price range (for basically just the tower unit) ideally under $2000 (Can) before tax, support etc or at least not much over It would seem to be a no brainer to go for 16 GB RAM (I dont think the budget goes to 32 GB). But Im less sure about CPU and GPU vs my current machine. For various reasons Im likely to stick with Dell (I have had their machines both laptop and dektops for a number of years and been happy with performance and especially their service; they may not be the cheapest around but have been good value. So here are the questions: - CPU: Is i7 worthe extra $ vs i5 - specifically i7 8700 vs i5 8400? - I should get 256 GB SSD + 1 TB HDD rather than just the HDD alone? (and so Put SL cache (and some of the OS etc ) on SSD.) Is 256GB SSD enough (vs 512 GB) - GPU - There are distinct price jumps between NV 1050 4 GB / 1060 6 GB / 1070 8 GB about $200 each step. (I do like to sail with a reasonable DD ideally 300m) Am I right that the sweet spot is probably the 1060, the 1050 may not be a lot better than what I have? the 1070 is overkill? I tend to believe in a balanced system but if I needed to econmise, whats the best way to do that - i5 CPU (vs i7), drop the SSD or GTX 1050 (rather than 1060).

My take, on a very non-scientific basis, from a sailing perspective in Blake Sea is "much about the same"; Ill ask around for other impressions. Day to day variability seems to dominate.

Which sims specifically? I sailed a bit yesterday in Blake. Sim borders mostly Ok. There was however a lot (more than usual) of some sort of lag with boats being astern one minuet and ahead the next. Not sure what the cause might have been; my boat was generally responding very well to controls, so not sure what flavour of lag that was. The most common problems, as I think you know, with sail boats are "falling off" (with the avi flying "seated" a few sims away from the boat), cam dislocation, and flying / submarfining. animats - really glad to see someone taking a hard look at all of this.

Sailing yesterday in Blake was Ok. But wasnt doing any sort of rigorous testing or stress testing.

Coming late to this party and playing catch up through the thread .... Boats also prone to this due this, when sailing a "straight course" there can still be acceleration effects due to waves, wind shifts / gusts etc and they can be over-extrapolated in similar fashion. To me the idea of constant velocity (rather than zero) while waiting for the update makes sense. Maybe with some kind of cap to cover situation where a network issue produces an extended delay (beyond bad hando ff). Maybe (if not too complex to code) if the boat reaches say mid sim before getting an update it should come to a fairly rapid stop.

I dont see any restarts scheduled for today but a small sample of Blake Sea sims shows restarts about 6 hours ago. Sailing conditions are gruesome today, unlike yesterday, and Im looking for the cause! Has anything changed since yesterday?

Hmmm ... I was looking at the FPS so cant quote values but Id guess they were low. So the Net, Physics and Script ms times dont matter? We're sailors (scripted vehicles) so aside from all that, a low script % would be a problem even if everything else was Ok (boat would be non-responsive). Im still not clear what is going on during the "Spare Time" and why it needs to be so large. Also ... how do Homesteads factor in this? Does each sim on the server get its own 22.2 ms frame time? Can one sim impact the others? (Arabian is a Homestead).

This is a multi-part question; both conceptual and specific) We have had an issue in Blake Sea Arabian since late last week (and until this morning) with Time Dilation fluctuating between 0.1 and 0.97 or so, frequently below 0.9 for sustained periods. No obvious causes; usage hasn't changed etc - TD is usually in the 0.95+ range. Restarts seem to have fixed it this morning - so far!! The first question is - do any Lindens reading this have access to any stats or info that would indicate the cause? Even in general, if not specific. The conceptual questions start with Spare Time. Im not clear if that is Total Frame Time - Net - Physics - Scripts, in which case my question is how is total Frame Time calculated? Or if Total Frame Time is Net + Physics + Scripts + Spare, in which case, how is Spare time calculated. Am I correct that Time Dilation is something line (22.22 / TotalFrameTime)? And am I right that Spare time needs to be over say 20 to avoid discernible lag? The real question is why? Its as if Spare time really isnt Spare, but in fact something else is happening in that time. If that is the case, why are there no stats on the hidden work, so that Spare time is truly spare, and values > some small margin indicate a healthy sim. Hoping someone can help me!

Thanks... just want to clarify... the code version on Cake is the same as the other RC channels other than possible interfaces to Linux?

Im afraid I havent been paying attention lately. I'm seeing 2 new serve channels, Cake and Snack. Are the distinct from the other 4 or are they subsets of the main channel? Specifically, Blake Sea - Crows Nest. That used to be main channel, but now its apparently "Cake". Main Channel was rolled this morning, but this sim is showing a restart date Thu 2017-04-27 12:54 PDT

This weeks roll seems to have been not quite up to par at least in Blake Sea. Major issues with lag, sim borders etc. Very high crash rates for sail boats. Someone mentioned that they are moving to new server hardware, can anyone confirm that? Or have any other explanation for whats going on.

Is there any connection to the problem of avis falling off vehicles on sim border crossings?

This raises a good point, but we may need to be careful about terminology. The experts here can correct me but, I beleive that: - the 'weekly roll' is a server deploy of updated code. IMHO such deploys should be far less frequent, 3 or 4 times a year max. It is not humanly possibly to adequately regression test the code with a weekly release schedule. - of course it also includes a 'restart'. restarts should actually be more frequent, at least in high activity areas, if not daily then every second day. So Id suggest daily restarts and quarterly deploys.

(Hoping this is the right forum for this) Im about to upgrade my pc and contemplating SSD. Id welcome advice comments on using EXTERNAL SSD (eg LaCie) on USB 3.0 for cache etc versus - internal 7200 rpm HDD (c:\...) - internal SSD (tho this may not be an easy option on the m/c Im likely going for) - external HDD on USB 3.0 - setting up a RAMDISK (old technology but maybe relevant here?) Also, would there be any concerns with SDD given a fair amount of write activity on the cache? I assume that write endurance is not an issue these days? This would all be on a m/c with 2 GB VRAM, if that is relevant to this question. And I sail so theres a lot of sim traversing (hence cache activity).

@ Madeleine - yes results from speedtest.net And Cat6 cable.

Ok, problem solved! I have done some spelunking around and discovered: LAN uses the Broadcom controller, Wifi uses the Intel. Using windows device manager, I discovered a Speed setting for the Broadcom thatwas set to 10 half. I changed it to Auto. And - viola!! HUGE improvent in Mb/s. Local starts out in the 80s for a few seconds then drops, avergaing 45. Im also getting similar reults from Dallas, slightly lower but not a lot. There is no such setting got the Intel. Will try it inworld a bit later on.

Yeah, this is all new stuff to me. sorry for being a bit helpless. Not sure how I can tell if the "connection" is 10/100 or 1000 as you put it. The laptop seems to have two network cards, but I have no idea how to tell which is being used when and when I googly for specs I just get more confused! The netwrok cards are: Broadcom NetXtreme 57xx Gigabit Controller Intel® Wireless WiFi Link 4965AGN and as I said the router is DLink 655 "Gigabit Xtreme" but the way I read the online infor for both cards and router I should be getting more than 10 Mb/s. Standing back from the weeds though ... - am I correct that the purpose of the cable is to eliminate RF intereference? while Im pretty sure Im hardly getting any on my WLAN once cant be sure. - does the difference between 7 Mb/s (wired) and 35 Mb/s (wifi) matter for SL? I still think my issue is Vid RAM (older laptop w NV 8700M GPU) but do want to be sure connection is set up best way possible. (At least when it matters, trailing a 100' cable round the house is not onvenient!)

hmmm.... well, I got a 100' Cat 6 cable (my desk is about 75'+ away from the cupboard that has the router in. SL is now giving me a slightly lower frame rate! So I ran speedest. Ping times are similar. Upload speeds are similar. But there is a HUGE difference in downlaod speeds. And wifi is WAY faster. Is this expected? I checked both local server and Dallas TX (one of the SL cities). Here are the results (averages of 2 or 3 readings) wired wifi Local Ping 9 12.3 Down 8.6 48.4 Up 3.3 3.1 MaxPing 9 17 Dallas Ping 57.5 58 Down 7.4 35.5 Up 2.8 3.0 MaxPing 58 58

Not quite sure what yr 1st sentence means Storm. But moving along... pardon my ignorance but what is QoS, in simple terms. (I did a quick Google and got confused!). I have Dlink D655. Looking at the QoS page there are multiple boxes (see below) which are basicall all checked. To turn off QoS as you recommend - do I uncheck both "enable traffic shaping" and "enable qos engine"? Does this affect what I might call the variability of the connection? My point is that most of the time I get adequate frame rates in SL.So I dont think I need to improve the 'best' or the 'average'. One other question ... I assume it doesnt matter how many Ethernet connections there are? Of the 4 available, 3 are already used by my audio / home theatre set up (Squeezebox, Wii, etc) but there is one slot free. Is it ok to leave those others connected? (There isnt anything being streamed when Im on SL). ...... WAN Traffic Shaping Enable Traffic Shaping: Automatic Uplink Speed : Measured Uplink Speed : Not Estimated Manual Uplink Speed : kbps << Connection Type : Detected xDSL or Other Frame Relay Network : No QoS Engine Setup Enable QoS Engine : Automatic Classification : Dynamic Fragmentation :

That's helpful, thanks. Part of my problem is not being able to make much sense of the logs. So when the viewer crashes or goes non-responsive it's hard to pin down the cause. Right now my money is on memory / GPU - so I want to see at least over several trial sessions if the cable makes any difference. Regarding Routers, do you have any recommendations? I'm currently using a DLink Xtreme I think it's called, about 4 years old. Regarding fluorescent lights, where do they make an impact? Near the router (not an issue it's in a cupboard), near the PC? Or anywhere in between? And what about LED?

Im always seeing comments not to use a WLAN but to use ethernet connection to router. I THINK my WLAN is well set up. But I do have issues with SL, but Im fairly certain they are due to age of my machine / GPU / RAM limitations (Del XPS, dual NV 8700M w 500MB each + 3 GB RAM). Ethernet cable leads to the obvious question as to what is the max reasonable distance one can run blue cable? is 50 feet Ok? 100 feet ? For a number of reasons the modem and the router are a ways from my desk.

Considering a new laptop and wondering what would be best for SL. Asus seems an obvious choice but Ive seen some mixed reviews. Machine woujld also be used for work and keyboard is also fairly important. Currnetly usng 5 yr old Dell XPS M1730. Another option looks like the new (ish?) Dell Inspiron 17" which has NV GT750M GPU w 2 GB. On paper it looks like it would cope well with SL but I wonder about heat and hence lifespan of the GPU / Motherboard. Has anyone had any experience of SL on this machine. Also, and this relates to my current machine too really ... is the load on the GPU reduced if one runs at less than the native resolution, eg 1680 x 1050 vs 1920 x 1200 or even 1440 x 900 - seems to be theres be 25% or almpst 50% fewer pixels to wrangle. For other reasons, Id want a laptop with HD resolution minimum (1920 x 1080) and prob cant afford much more. But its ot obvious that SL on a 17" or less screen needs that much. Finally, are there any useful OPenGl benchmarks? Passmark etc all seem to be Direct focused.

I recall seeing somewhere to beware of GPU benchmarks based on other games, something to do with DirectX. I guess my question really is, nonetheless are they a good guide as the RELATIVE power, for SL, of different GPU? Also, are the Intel Iris GPUS in Mac notebooks as bad as other chips? I'm toying with the idea of going Mac for other reasons, but am nervous about using a MacBook (other than a fully loaded Pro which I likely can't afford ).

So then, all else being equal, go for more vid ram rather then less. I forget which machie but I did see a mid price with fairly good GPU but only 512 MB vid ram. That would be a poor choice? ... Is Intel Iris (Mac) any better than other intel gpus (for SL)? It does have somewhat higher Passmark rateing than the Intel D chips.. but I note the comment re: DirectX vs OpenGL.

Hey Orcs fancy seeing you in a place like this LOL! So NV GTX 699 is what Id want, if it exists LOL. GT 640M or 650M seem common in lappies in middle of my price range; if I push it then its 750M. Apple (Mac Book Pro, lower end / Air) has something called Intl Iris? Any diea what that is and how good it is?